By AIDA CERKEZ
Associated Press

SARAJEVO, Bosnia-Herzegovina (AP) — “Safe havens” for civilians in Syria? Think twice, Bosnians would warn.

With the U.N. unable to agree how to protect civilians against Bashar Assad’s forces, Western officials are discussing creation of safe corridors to deliver aid to Syrians trapped by the crackdown.

Similar measures failed badly during the war in Bosnia two decades ago that killed over 100,000 people and left millions homeless. The lesson of Bosnia is that without all sides honoring the agreement - and without a robust military response in case they don’t - such measures may have little effect and could actually prolong the misery.

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EDITORS NOTE - Aida Cerkez reported from the ‘safe haven’ of Sarajevo throughout the 1992-95 Bosnian war.

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In 1993, the U.N. Security Council passed a resolution that declared six cities in Bosnia as “safe havens” for civilians and deployed military observers to monitor the situation.

The U.N. protected zones in places like the capital of Sarajevo or the eastern enclave of Srebrenica in effect became prisons, subject to relentless shelling by Bosnian Serb forces that often denied they were responsible. The U.N. never managed to get enough aid through the corridors and smugglers made fortunes.

The U.N. found their troops often under attack. But the mandate on striking back was limited and unclear. The Security Council responded with several futile resolutions “strongly condemning” the attacks and urging safe passage for aid convoys.

The U.N. was operating under a peacekeeping mandate that allowed international forces to defend themselves but not to initiate action. It’s precisely that type of operation that is currently being aired for Syria, although no draft has been submitted to the Security Council.

Without the mandate, the numbers or the will to engage with Serb forces, the U.N. peacekeepers in Bosnia found themselves powerless to prevent bloodshed - and were in fact exposed to the possibility of being taken hostage and used as human shields.

Faced with hostile fire, Western peacekeepers more often preferred to retreat rather than fight back. Essentially, the effectiveness of the safe havens boiled down to the restraint of the warring parties that had agreed to them.

The Serbs exploited that weakness at will - overrunning safe zones as U.N. troops stood idly by.

A road linking the Sarajevo airport to the city was officially under U.N. protection and off limits to Sarajevo residents, but the Serbs kept a checkpoint and controlled the traffic throughout the 1992-95 war.

Eventually, the road became so dangerous that foreign journalists and aid workers dubbed it the “Road to Hell” and the main street in Sarajevo “Sniper Ally.”

Those safe havens actually lengthened the 1992-95 war.

Instead of stopping the bloodshed, they simply reduced it to a politically acceptable level. It enabled both the attackers and the resistance to continue fighting.

Without a quick political settlement, neither side could achieve victory and both staved off decisive defeat. It was not until Serb forces overran Srebrenica in July 1995 that the West could no longer sit and watch and deployed troops to stop the carnage.

The enclave fell after senior U.N. commanders rejected a request by a few hundred Dutch peacekeepers deployed in Srebrenica for air strikes and its Muslim Bosnian residents swarmed a U.N. military base, still believing the Dutch would protect them.

But outnumbered and outgunned, the U.N. peacekeepers allowed the Serbs to separate women and children from men and execute some 8,000 males in what later became known as the worst massacre in Europe since World War II.

Hans Blom, who oversaw a Dutch government-commisioned investigation into the Srebrenica massacre, said he is “very pessimistic” about what the international community can do in Syria. He voiced skepticism over the U.N.’s concept of “safe zones” or “safe areas,” calling it a very vague notion and difficult to enforce.

“My insight of the Srebrenica case is that international institutions are inclined to do the wrong thing at the wrong moment,” said Blom, who headed the Netherlands Institute of War Documentation at the time it prepared its authoritative Srebrenica report.

Another major problem remains in Syria. The “safe havens” would require an outside force to ensure security for aid convoys that would transport the stockpiles of medical and humanitarian supplies that Washington says are being prepared at Syria’s borders.

Any international mission would need the approval of Russia and China, which hold veto power on the Security Council - and both countries are adamantly against such intervention unless Syria agrees.

The top U.S. commander in the Middle East recently said the advanced air defense weapons Russia has provided to Syria would make it difficult to establish a no-fly zone there as part of an effort to protect the civilians.

Marine Gen. James Mattis, head of U.S. Central Command, told the Senate Armed Services Committee it would take a significant military commitment to create safe havens in Syria where aid could be delivered, as U.S. Republican Sen. John McCain has suggested.

Another lesson from the Balkans: Nothing worked until the United States stepped in with its military power.

A 60,000-strong American-led NATO ground force was sent to Bosnia in 1995 to enforce a U.S.-brokered peace agreement. Faced with Western determination to use force, the warring factions never tried to confront them.

U.S. and British officers simply drove to Serb checkpoints surrounding Sarajevo, stepped out of their vehicles and informed the gunmen they have 30 seconds to leave. The dreaded Serb checkpoint on the Road to Hell disappeared without a bullet being fired.

Blom said that for now he doesn’t see a role for international peacekeepers in Syria because there is no peace to keep and any humanitarian workers who were to enter the country would face massive violence. Only a massive military intervention could stop the violence, he argued.

“Only if there is a very determined outside force willing to use military means, it’s maybe possible,” he said. “Interventions are a very complicated thing. And the terrible thing, of course, is that doing nothing is as bad.”

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Dusan Stojanovic from Belgrade, Serbia, and Vanessa Gera from Warsaw, Poland, contributed reporting.

Members of the Free Syrian Army (FSA) take position in Idlib in northwestern Syria on February 22, 2012. (BULENT KILIC/AFP/Getty Images)

BEIRUT — Medics stitch wounds with thread used for clothing. Hungry residents risk Syrian government sniper fire or shelling to hunt for dwindling supplies of bread and canned food on the streets of the besieged city of Homs.

The opposition stronghold was being destroyed “inch by inch,” by government forces, with collapsed walls and scorched buildings, according to accounts Thursday, while Western and Arab leaders hoped to silence the guns long enough to rush in relief aid.

The pressure for “humanitarian corridors” into the central Syrian city of Homs and other places caught in President Bashar Assad’s crushing attacks appeared to be part of shifts toward more aggressive steps against his regime after nearly a year of bloodshed and thousands of deaths in an anti-government uprising.

In back-to-back announcements, U.N.-appointed investigators in Geneva said a list for possible crimes against humanity prosecution reaches as high as Assad, and international envoys in London – including U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton – made final touches to an expected demand for Assad to call a cease-fire within days to permit emergency shipments of food and medicine.

Washington and European allies remain publicly opposed to direct military intervention. But there have been growing signs that Western leaders could back efforts to open channels for supplies and weapons to the Syrian opposition, which includes breakaway soldiers from Assad’s military.

In a sign of the international divide, however, key Assad ally Russia said Moscow and Beijing remain opposed to any foreign interference in Syria. Russian President Dmitry Medvedev spoke by telephone with the president of the United Arab Emirates and emphasized that “foreign interference, attempts to assess the legitimacy of the leadership of a state from the outside, run counter to the norms of international law and are fraught with the threat of regional and global destabilization,” the Kremlin said.

“It is a deeply frustrating situation,” British Foreign Secretary William Hague told BBC radio ahead of the London talks. He said that the Assad regime “has continued to act seemingly with impunity.”

At least 16 people were killed across Syria, activists said. One group, the Local Coordination Committees, put the number at 40 with attacks ranging from mountain villages to areas near the capital of Damascus. The reason for the differing tolls was not immediately clear.

The most intense offensive, however, remained on beleaguered Homs, Syria’s third-largest city. Its defiance – amid hundreds of civilian casualties in the past weeks – has eroded Assad’s narrative that the uprising is the work of “armed thugs” and foreign plots.

Images posted online and accounts from activists and correspondents smuggled in – including two Western journalists killed Wednesday – also have stirred comparisons to sieges such as Misrata during last year’s Arab Spring revolt in Libya.

The epicenter – the Baba Amr neighborhood on the city’s southeast corner – is a collection of slum-like apartment blocks with peeling paint and neglected older homes. They draw in workers and fortune-seekers from across Syria to a place known as the “mother of the poor” because of its cheaper cost of living, compared with Damascus or Aleppo.

“They are blanketing Baba Amr with shells and snipers. They are destroying it street by street, inch by inch,” local activist Omar Shaker told The Associated Press.

Residents say 70 percent of the area is now inhabitable in harsh winter weather with temperatures dipping close to freezing some nights. Walls have collapsed; windows are shattered from shells that fall as much as two-a-minute during some of the heaviest barrages.

Another Homs activist, Mulham al-Jundi, called the conditions “catastrophic” in parts of the city, spreading over a valley in central Syria just 18 miles (30 kilometers) from the Lebanese border. Long lines form at even rumors of bread, cans of food or fuel for heaters, he said.

“There simply isn’t enough to go around anymore,” said Rami Abdul-Rahman, director of the British-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.

Syria’s state-run media pushed back with its own version: Running photos on the official news agency SANA that claim to show markets full of food in Homs. It called the claims about food shortages “fabricating lies.”

Activists give a very different view. Bodies are buried wherever people can find space, they say. The wounded are too scared to try to reach government-controlled hospitals in other parts of the city. Instead, they stagger into makeshift clinics in kitchens and offices, al-Jundi said.

He said clothing thread is now used after surgical sutures ran out. In some places, medics conduct operations by only the light of an office lamp. In the Bab Drieb neighborhood, volunteers get a crash course in basic first aid before being put to work.

“I saw a nurse teaching a couple of people what to do. They had no idea,” said al-Jundi. “It’s unbelievable and tragic.”

Homs – which is mostly Sunni – was an early flashpoint of dissent against Assad’s regime, which is led by the minority Alawite community, which has Shiite power Iran as its main patron.

In April, protesters gathered at the central Clock Square in Homs, bringing mattresses, food and water in hopes of emulating Cairo’s Tahrir Square during the Egyptian revolution. Homs had a reputation for tolerance between Syria’s religions and Muslim sects, said Mohammad Saleh, an opposition figure who fled the city, but Sunnis have increasingly felt pushed into an underclass status by Assad.

A Western intelligence official said the Syrian military has the ability to “level Homs if it wanted to.” But the risks of backlash from Syria’s majority Sunnis – including many military officers – is far too great, said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity under briefing rules.

On Wednesday, shelling of Baba Amr killed American-born veteran war correspondent Marie Colvin and French photographer Remi Ochlik.

They were among a group of journalists who had crossed into Syria illegally and were sharing accommodations with activists, raising speculation that government forces targeted the makeshift media center where they were staying. But opposition groups had previously described the shelling as indiscriminate. At least two other Western journalists were wounded on Wednesday.

A Syrian Foreign Ministry spokesman offered condolences to the families of Colvin and Ochlik, but rejected any responsibility for their deaths. The spokesman urged foreign journalists to respect Syrian laws and not to sneak into the country.

Some Syrians held protests and vigils Wednesday night to honor Colvin and Ochlik.

“Remi Ochlik, Marie Colvin, we will not forget you,” read one banner held by protesters in the town of Qsour in Homs province.

Two other journalists were wounded. In a video posted on YouTube, one of those injured, Edith Bouvier of Le Figaro, said her leg is broken in two places and that she has received some medical treatment but now needs an operation. Bouvier said she was speaking Thursday and is calm throughout the more than six-minute video.

The U.N. estimates that 5,400 people have been killed in repression by the Assad regime against a popular uprising that began 11 months ago. That figure was given in January and has not been updated. Syrian activists put the death toll at more than 7,300. Overall figures cannot be independently confirmed because Syria keeps tight control on the media.

“Every minute counts,” Shaker said. “People will soon start to collapse from lack of sleep and shortages in food.”

The international struggle over how to end Syria’s crisis moves Friday to Tunisia. The meeting is expected to bring together more than 70 nations to look at ways to assist Assad’s opponents.

The United States, Europe and Arab nations worked in London to draft a demand for Assad to impose a cease-fire with 72 hours to allow humanitarian convoys or face new punitive measures, likely to include toughened sanctions.

Officials at the London meeting said some nations have proposed creating protected corridors for humanitarian relief. It was unclear, however, whether it would receive full backing because it would almost certainly require military protection. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity due to the sensitivity of the ongoing discussions before the so-called “Friends of Syria” conference in Tunis.

Some Arab nations, such as Qatar, have urged consideration of direct military intervention similar to the NATO-led air campaign that helped end Moammar Gadhafi’s regime in Libya. Western powers have so far opposed trying to mobilize another military coalition for Syria.

More workable, officials said, would be a cease-fire such as the one proposed by the International Committee of the Red Cross, which is calling for a daily two-hour break in fighting to provide aid.

“The efforts that we are undertaking with the international community … are intended to demonstrate the Assad regime’s deepening isolation,” Clinton told reporters. “Our immediate focus is on increasing the pressure. We have got to find ways of getting food, medicine and other humanitarian assistance. Into affected areas. This takes time and it takes a lot of diplomacy.”

If Assad doesn’t comply, “we think that the pressure will continue to build. … I think that the strategy followed by the Syrians and their allies is one that can’t stand the test of legitimacy … for any length of time,” she said. “There will be increasingly capable opposition forces. They will from somewhere, somehow find the means to defend themselves as well as begin offensive measures.”

White House spokesman Jay Carney said the Obama administration still opposes military intervention but “obviously we’ll have to evaluate this as time goes on.”

In Geneva, a panel of U.N. human rights experts said the United Nations has a secret list of top Syrian officials who could face investigation for crimes against humanity. The U.N. experts indicated that the list goes as high as Assad.

Experts said the list appears mostly part of international pressures on Syria rather than a direct threat. Syria isn’t a member of the International Criminal Court so is outside its jurisdiction. Russia also would likely block any moves in the U.N. Security Council to refer the country to the Hague-based tribunal.

The European Union is expected next week to add seven Syrian government ministers to those already under sanctions that free assets and ban visas, said an EU official in Brussels. The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of EU rules, said additional restrictions may be imposed on Syria’s central bank, on imports of precious metals from the country, and on cargo flights.

The EU had already sanctioned more than 70 Syrians and 19 organizations, and has banned imports of Syrian oil.

In Amman, Jordan, several dozen Syrians, mainly from Homs, protested at the U.S. Embassy and asked for Western military intervention. “Almighty God, destroy Bashar,” they chanted.

Bashar al-Assad’s army is close to a collapse that could plunge the Middle East into a “nuclear reaction”, its most senior defector has told The Sunday Telegraph.

By Richard Spencer, Middle East Correspondent

8:00AM GMT 05 Feb 2012

The Assads’ increasing reliance on loyalists from their own Alawite minority meant Sunni officers had fled, were under house arrest or at best marginalised and distrusted.

“The army will collapse during February,” he said. “The reasons are the shortage of Syrian army personnel, which even before March 15 last year did not exceed 65 per cent. The proportion of equipment that was combat ready did not exceed that, due to a shortage of spare parts.

“The Syrian army combat readiness I would put at 40 per cent for hardware and 32 per cent for personnel.

“They are sending in elements from the Shabiha (militia) and the Alawite sect to compensate, but this army is unable to continue more than a month. Some elements of the army are reaching out to the FSA to help them to defect.”

Gen Sheikh is not an impartial observer. He is negotiating with the Syrian National Council and the FSA over his future role in the offensive against President Assad. Even now, few analysts or diplomats would agree with his view, believing that the regime, though weakened, has the resilience to cling on to power for months, if not years.

“That the government’s days are numbered can no longer be in serious doubt, but just how many it has left remains an open question,” Yezid Sayigh, an analyst at the Carnegie Endowment, wrote this week . “The regime cannot win, but it certainly can resist and prolong the conflict.”

Gen Sheikh said he had battled with his conscience before fleeing, mindful of his 37 years’ service and of possible retribution against his extended family. He said the final straw had been a sexual assault by soldiers who took turns to attack a young bride at a village near the town of Hama. He believes the army has become a ‘crazy killing machine’, and that without a solution within a fortnight, “the whole region will flare up”.

“The region is strained to the limits because of the role of Iran,” he said. “The Syrian regime has helped transform it into a base for Iranian conspiracies.”

He said that some of the possible solutions – buffer zones, humanitarian corridors – were no longer relevant, even in the unlikely event of United Nations security council backing.

“There is no time,” he said. “There is a serious acceleration under way due to the collapse of the army and the security system.

“We want very urgent intervention, outside of the security council due to the Russian veto. We want a coalition similar to what happened in Kosovo and the Ivory Coast.”

Jan 26 2012, 7:02 AM ET

Even though the military challenges might make it unfeasible, we should acknowledge the moral and historical cases for intervening.

A Syrian boy in Homs stands in front of a burned out armored vehicle belonging to the army / Reuters

I was an early supporter of military intervention in Libya. I called for a no-fly zone on February 23, just 8 days after protests began. Now, we’re nearly 300 days into the Syrian uprising. Very few analysts, myself included, have publicly called for foreign intervention, even though the Syrian regime has proven both more unyielding and more brutal than Muammar Qaddafi’s.

Steven Cook, in a recent and controversial piece, made the case for the military option in Syria. I agree with much of Cook’s article but not all of it. Emotionally, and from a purely moral perspective, I agree with all of it. The risks of intervention, however, are tremendous. Marc Lynch has made the most persuasive case for caution. So I find myself torn.

It may make sense, then, to revisit the reasons I, and several others including Lynch, broke ranks with our colleagues on the left and supported the NATO operation in Libya. First, American policymakers should — as a matter of principle — take Arab public opinion seriously. In the lead-up to the Iraq War, there were no widespread calls among Iraqis themselves for us, or anyone else, to intervene militarily. In Libya, there were. The Libyan rebels were practically begging us to step in with military force.

In recent months, a rapidly growing number of Syrian activists, both on the ground and those in exile, have called forcefully and repeatedly for some form of foreign intervention, whether through the establishment of no-fly zones, no-drive zones, humanitarian corridors, “safe zones,” or through the arming of rebel forces such as the Free Syrian Army. 

The Syrian National Council, the most important Syrian opposition body and the closest analogue to Libya’s National Transitional Council, has unequivocally called for foreign intervention. Its leaders have repeatedly issued such calls to the international community in similarly clear language. The same goes for Syrian activists on the ground. Each week, they agree on a theme for the Friday protests that take place across the country. On Friday, October 28, the protests were dubbed, again rather unambiguously, “no-fly zone Friday.” We can’t — and shouldn’t — endorse something just because a country’s opposition wants us to, but we do need to take their calls seriously, particularly because they happen to be directed to us.

As I argued in a recent article in The New Republic, Arab protesters and revolutionaries, despite their often passionate dislike of U.S. policy, continue to turn to us for support in their time of need. This should not be taken lightly. In a time when millions of Arabs are demanding and dying for their freedom, the United States finds itself in a privileged role. Because of who we are, what we claim to aspire to — and, of course, our unparalleled military capability — we often, for both better and worse, have the power to tip the balance one way or the other.

The clichéd refrain that the Arab uprisings are about “them” and not “us” seems to treat Western powers as innocent bystanders, which they aren’t and haven’t been for five decades. International factors have been critical in the majority of countries facing unrest, including Syria, Yemen, Bahrain, Libya, and, to a lesser extent, Egypt. In short, U.S. support for democracy matters and will continue to matter for the foreseeable future. In some countries, it will matter a great deal.

Some critics of the Libya intervention feared it would set a precedent. I hoped it would set a precedent — that whenever pro-democracy protesters were threatened with massacre, the U.S., Europe, and its allies would take the responsibility to protect seriously, and consider military intervention as a legitimate option — provided that those on the ground asked us to do so.

Unfortunately, one successful case of military intervention — in Libya — is not enough to establish a precedent. For too long, the Syrian regime has assumed, correctly it turns out, that Libya was the exception that proved the rule. Obama administration officials have said as much, insisting that the military option is not being seriously considered for Syria.

To be sure, one should always look at Western intervention in Arab lands with some degree of skepticism. The United States has a tragic history in the region, supporting repressive dictatorships for over 50 years with rather remarkable consistency. But where there is sin there is also atonement. What made Libya a “pure” intervention was that we acted not because our vital interests were threatened but in spite of the fact that they were not. For me, this was yet one more reason to laud it. Libya provided us an opportunity to begin the difficult work of re-orienting U.S. foreign policy, to align ourselves, finally, with our own ideals.

For me, Syria is part of this bigger debate; what role does the United States seek for itself in a rapidly changing world, a world in which activists and rebels still long for an America that will recognize the struggle and come to the aid of their revolutions. The rising democracies of Brazil and India cannot offer this. Russia and China certainly cannot.

Hastening Bashar al-Assad’s fall, aside from being the right thing to do, would also be squarely in our self-interest. The Iran-Syria-Hezbollah axis would be destroyed. Iran would find itself significantly weakened without its traditional entry point into the Arab world. Hezbollah, dependent on both Iranian and Syrian military and financial support, would also suffer. A democratic Syria, meanwhile, would likely be more in line with U.S. interests. In a free election, a reconstituted Syrian Muslim Brotherhood would stand a good chance of winning a plurality of seats. As I’ve written previously, the Syrian Muslim Brotherhood has had the distinction of being one of the region’s fiercest opponents of Iranian hegemony.  

In short, whether based on ideals or interests, the case for intervention is strong. I am not, however, a military specialist. I cannot say whether military intervention would work. Considering all the variables at play, it could turn into a terrible mess, perhaps more terrible than it already is.

Indeed, there are a number of reasons why intervention, today, would be premature (Michael Weiss runs through some of them in his excellent article in Foreign Affairs). But it may not be premature in a month or in two. The international community must begin considering a variety of military options — the establishment of “safe zones” seems the most plausible — and determine which enjoys the highest likelihood of causing more good than harm. This is now — after nearly a year of waiting and hoping — the right thing to do. It is also the responsible thing to do.

On Monday, Jan. 23, the Syrian National Council (SNC) countered the Arab League’s observer mission’s final report with one of its own. A copy of the counter-report was delivered to Arab League Secretary-General Nabil El-Araby.

The Arab League report contains nearly 100 pages of detailed accounts, including photographs and video clips, documenting the regime’s heinous crimes against humanity. The same accounts were previously sidelined by the Arab League and its head of mission, Sudanese Gen. Ahmed Mustafa al-Dabi.

On Sunday, Jan. 22, at a press conference in Cairo, the SNC revealed details of its counter-report. SNC members presented the staggering numbers of fallen heroes, as well as those of the wounded, tortured, detained, and missing in Syria.

The SNC believes that the Arab League’s report is deceptive, and therefore unacceptable by any standard. With 24 documented errors, the report has proven inconsistent with the reality on the ground. According to the SNC’s counter-report, this inconsistency confirms that the observers were incompetent to document the ongoing crisis in Syria, and furthers the perception that the Arab League’s mission’s lacked credibility.

The SNC’s counter-report demands that the regime immediately:

• Cease its use of force against demonstrators.
• Withdraw its military and armed forces from cities and towns.
• Release all detainees.
• Disclose the fate of those subjected to enforced disappearances.
• Refrain from undertaking any reprisals against civilians who collaborated with the Arab League observers and testified with regard to the regime’s human rights violations.

As part of its recommendations, the SNC calls on the Arab League to fulfill all its obligations, as stipulated by its own initiative, and comply with the terms of the protocol signed by the Syrian regime. In addition, the Arab League must recognize its own limitations in securing the necessary protection for unarmed civilians, and quickly refer the Syrian case to the United Nations Security Council (UNSC).

The SNC counter-report also calls on the UNSC to refer the Syrian case to the International Criminal Court (ICC) and to implement all steps necessary to protect Syrian civilians. Furthermore, the USNC must pass a resolution to establish humanitarian corridors within affected cities, impose a no-fly-zone in Syria, demand a weapons embargo, and call for even tougher economic sanctions against Syrian officials guilty of crimes against humanity.

The SNC’s counter-report requests that United Nations members to put an end to all military and security assistance to the regime. Finally, the SNC believes it is critical to grant international media, human rights groups, and humanitarian relief agencies full access to assess the extent of destruction in Syria.

Reports indicate that the Arab League has appointed three experts to review the SNC’s counter-report and provide recommendations to the Secretary-General.

Some Syrian opposition members and Western countries have called for the creation of safe zones and humanitarian corridors in Syria, writes Bassel Oudat in Damascus

French Foreign Minister Alain Juppé announced on 24 November that his country was seeking to create “humanitarian corridors” in Syria in response to demands by the Syrian opposition, adding that military action might be required to protect caravans transporting goods through these corridors.

Juppé said France would discuss the issue with its EU partners, the UN and Arab League, adding that the US and France had reached “common ground” on creating the corridors.

Borhan Ghalioun, chairman of the Syrian National Council (SNC) which represents the opposition abroad, had asked the French government to create humanitarian corridors in Syria “because there is a humanitarian crisis resulting from a scarcity of basic goods in the country,” Juppe said.

International law dictates that humanitarian corridors can enable international humanitarian aid organisations to transport essential goods to regions caught up in conflict, civil war or disasters.

The French government is considering establishing a secure corridor to neighbouring countries like Turkey, Lebanon, or Jordan, or even to an airport or seaport in Syria, in order to unload humanitarian aid shipments. International humanitarian relief groups could then distribute the aid and medical supplies to residential areas that need them, while international monitors could ensure that the Syrian authorities did not interfere in the operation.

Juppé said that the corridors would be difficult to implement and that they would require the approval of the Syrian government and an international mandate. Without approval from Damascus, the only way to carry out the idea would be by force and with UN support, he said.

“We can protect relief caravans by military force, but we are not at that point yet,” Juppé said, adding that it was likely that options other than military intervention would be pursued.

The UN said there was no urgency in creating the humanitarian corridors, even though more than 1.5 million Syrians are thought to be in need of emergency assistance. UN undersecretary-general for humanitarian affairs and emergency relief Valerie Amos said that the Syrian Red Cross was better able to provide the food aid than international organisations.

The French proposal is not a new one, since members of the country’s opposition abroad and the Syrian Free Army (SFA) formed of defectors from the Syrian army have long asked for the creation of safe zones and no-fly zones in the country. There has also been a suggestion that safe zones should be created in the north of the country along the border with Turkey and in the south on the border with Jordan.

However, creating the corridors depends on factors that do not seem likely to come together in the short term, and the areas hosting such humanitarian corridors and safe zones inside Syria have not been decided.

No decisions have been made on who would secure such areas, or whether neighbouring countries would agree to such plans.

In the case of Libya, the regime of former Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi made it difficult for humanitarian aid to be distributed, and western countries were only able to do so after the imposition of a no-fly zone under UN Security Council Resolution 1973.

The Arab League has said it intends to ask the UN Security Council to take the necessary steps under the UN Charter to support efforts by the League to resolve the situation in Syria. The statement came after Damascus rejected the Arab peace initiative that had called for the withdrawal of army forces from Syrian towns, the release of tens of thousands of prisoners, and the launching of a dialogue with the opposition under the auspices of the League.

The indications are that the UN will be willing to support Arab League proposals to send a peace mission to observe conditions in Syria, where a nine-month crackdown against anti-regime protests has killed thousands and injured tens of thousands more.

However, Turkey, a neighbouring country that risks being drawn into the Syrian crisis, has said that it is unaware of the details of these proposals. Turkish sources suggest that there are still other options, adding that these should be pursued until the situation in Syria takes a turn for the worse.

The mountainous border region between Syria and Turkey extends over 900km, and there is no real military presence there apart from occasional observation posts. The Adana Agreement signed in 1998 between the two countries imposed a five-kilometre demilitarised zone inside the Syrian border, making it easier for Turkey to create a buffer zone if the idea were to receive international support.

Not everyone in the Syrian opposition agrees to the creation of safe zones and humanitarian corridors. “The proposal to create safe zones or humanitarian corridors in Syria is a political demand dressed up as a humanitarian request,” Nasser Al-Ghazali, director of the Damascus Centre for Theoretical and Civil Rights Studies, told Al-Ahram Weekly.

“It would propel the Syrian crisis down a path that serves international interests. It would not serve the interests of the Syrian people and their uprising for freedom and dignity.”

Al-Ghazali said that past experience had shown that creating humanitarian corridors “was unsuccessful and mostly resulted in immense suffering, as well as the partition of countries where this took place.”

“Creating buffer zones or humanitarian corridors and legitimising the actions of the SFA would be a magic formula to sharply increase the number of victims in Syria and partition the country.”

Al-Ghazali underscored the importance of protecting civilians in Syria from the regime crackdown. “Unbiased Arab and international monitors should be sent to Syria as a result of a decision by international humanitarian organisations and not the UN Security Council, with the support of the Arab League and the UN,” he said.

“This would be a precondition for defining in exact terms what protecting civilians means, and any decisions should include clear measures according to a short timeline.” If the regime blocked the monitors, “then the matter should be referred to the UN General Assembly and Security Council,” al-Ghazali said.

There are other options on the table, ranging from sanctions against the Syrian regime to military intervention.

“It seems the Syrian regime will continue down the same path,” Anwar al-Bonni, director of the Syrian Centre for Legal Research and Studies, told the Weekly. “It has no other choice except to continue until the end. It is relying on the possibility that people will stop protesting, or that the international community will stop pressuring it. However, neither of these is likely to happen. The regime has entered a dark tunnel and blocked the entrance.”

Nevertheless, the Syrian regime still thinks otherwise, and according to Fayez Ezzeddin, a leading figure in Syria’s ruling Baath Party, “the Arab League and international community are challenging Syria’s sovereignty, and this is unacceptable.”

“Syria will never relinquish its sovereignty because it knows that the Arabs and the West are plotting to destroy the country. It is no longer a matter of freedom or rights for any category of people,” he told the Weekly.

Marah Al-Beqaai, a member of the opposition and director of the Al-Waref Institute for Humanitarian Studies in Washington, suggested that the Arab League should make its decisions binding on Syria.

“The Arab League must form an Arab defence force similar to the one that intervened in Lebanon in the 1980s,” Al-Beqaai told the Weekly. “This is the urgent mechanism needed to end the killing and destruction in Syria, and it is an Arab solution unrelated to foreign interference.”

Al-Beqaai doubted that there would be foreign intervention in Syria. “The international community has clearly demonstrated that it will not directly interfere in Syria. The US is throwing the ball into the EU’s court, and because of difficult economic conditions in Europe, the EU is passing the problem onto Turkey. Turkey is fearful of going to war by itself, so it is passing the buck to the Arab League. Meanwhile, the Syrian regimes continues to kill civilians and destroy the country,” she said.

In an interview with the Weekly, a spokesman for the Coordination Organisation of Forces for Democratic Change, the domestic Syrian opposition, said that “the regime has squandered its last chance. It loves to waste opportunities. The resolutions of the Arab League constituted a solid foundation to put the Syrian crisis on the path towards resolution, but the position of the Syrian regime has propelled the crisis into a more volatile stage.”